More flying on fumes at EK

[kennedy]

Latest fuel policy

In flight reclearence, in a effort to reduce the carriage of fuel this policy (normally used for max range flying) is to be introduced so as to arrive at desdi with even less fuel!!

Are you willing to commit to Dubai some where over Iran or Saudi because you will arrive in the hold without Alternate fuel with these new plans.

Should be fun reading the ASR's

[doubleu-anker]

Foolish in the extreme and false economy.

Just hope they get a whole lot of diversions. Guess the crew will be sacked if that happened.

The day I am "forced" to fly with those sort or reserves, is the day I give up the job. Certainly wont fly on EK as a pax either.

[Lancelot37]

Are they cutting down on the amount of reseve fuel to allow a/c to carry more luggage? EK have just increased the luggage allowance for Ecomomy from 20kg to 30kg. You can't get something for nothing.

[Marooned]

UAE AIP fuel requirement...

The UAE equivalent of the AIP (I'll get the exact reference shortly) says to plan for at least 20 mins holding (not included in the OFP) so despite EK 'policy' it would be in contradiction on the advice given by the GCAA.

I stand to be corrected.

At the end of the day we 'the pilots' make the decision. The policy and attitudes will change however under a weight of subsequent ASRs but we must be clear about our fuel state and apply the ICAO rules; if you think you will land below final reserve call a Pan, if you know call a Mayday, if no EAT divert and in all cases submit the ASRs. Use the rules, play by them and they can't do anything but change the policy when it costs them both in terms of money and reputation.

Sad to say but in these times it would also be advisable to get the legal insurance cover now on offer.

Be safe.

[kiwi]

Do you guys remember several months back,when the fog caused massive disruptions.
TC, Lord of the Ivory Tower's reaction was to force all pilots to carry (without right to vary!) 20 tons or more additional fuel , offloading freight and passengers as a knee jerk reaction to the disruption caused by the diversions.
Makes their new policy a drop in the ocean, for savings! Very hard to take these people seriously!
Can't wait to see how they try to recover the aircraft next time the aircraft are parked all over the middle east, after scre*ing the pilot group as they have!
No doubt many of our collegues will find it impossible to say no but think they'll still have a more difficult time recovering the schedule!!

[Jetjock330]

Marooned,

The UAE equivalent of the AIP (I'll get the exact reference shortly) says to plan for at least 20 mins holding (not included in the OFP) so despite EK 'policy' it would be in contradiction on the advice given by the GCAA.

I stand to be corrected.

Here it is:


United Arab Emirates
General Civil Aviation Authority
Aeronautical
Information Circular
Number 04 2006

04 October 2006

Current AIC : 04/98, 01/00, 02/00, 02/01, 05/01, 06/01, 01/02, 02/02, 03/02, 01/03, 02/03, 04/03, 05/03, 01/04, 01/06,
02/06, 03/06 & 04/06


FUEL RESERVES APPROACHING MINIMUM
1. Incidents of crews reporting an inability to
hold in the vicinity of their destination
aerodrome prior to landing because of a
shortage of fuel have indicated a lack of
understanding by operators and crews of
the situation existing in busy UAE
terminal areas.
2. A number of aeroplanes appear to be
approaching the UAE with no more than
minimum reserves of fuel. Aeroplane
commanders who determine, in flight,
that their aeroplane will have little or no
fuel above that which their company
specifies as minimum reserves, should
establish that the weather conditions at
the destination and alternate aerodromes
fulfil specified criteria and that no delay is
expected before commencing an
approach.
3. The information concerning delays that is
passed to the crew by the controller is the
best available at the time and takes
account of the expected volume of traffic
at the aeroplanes estimated arrival time.
If the information available to the
controller indicates a reasonably easy
flow of traffic, and Estimated Approach
Times (EAT) are not being issued for the
destination aerodrome, the response to a
request about delay will be 'No delay
expected'.
3.1 'NO delay expected' means in these
circumstances:
'DO not anticipate being required
to remain in a holding pattern
longer than 20 minutes before
commencing an approach'.
3.2 Where a delay greater than 20
minutes is expected, the controller will
pass an EAT. When delays are
expected to be less than 20 minutes,
controllers will, when requested, give
a general indication of the expected
delay.
4. Traffic situations in the terminal areas
can change very quickly even though 'No
delay expected' will often mean
precisely that, crews should expect that
on occasions some holding will be
required before they are fitted into the
final approach pattern.
5. It is important, therefore, that operators
and crews should take a realistic view of
the amount of fuel required, to satisfy the
minimum fuel overhead destination
requirements.
6. Crews should plan to arrive overhead a
destination aerodrome with, at the very
least, fuel sufficient to:
a) Make an approach to land; and
b) carry out a missed approach; and
c) fly to an alternate aerodrome, carry
out the subsequent approach and
landing; and
d) hold for 30 minutes delay.
7. When the planned alternate aerodrome is
in the same busy area as the destination,
the track miles on which the fuel
requirement for flying to the alternate is
calculated should be realistically
assessed taking account of the extended
routing which can reasonably be
expected during busy periods
8. Pilots should also be aware that although
every effort will be made to expedite their
arrival, a call such as 'Fuel Emergency'
has no status in the UAE and ATC
cannot give priority to an aircraft with a
shortage of fuel unless an emergency is
declared.
9. A radio call prefixed by MAYDAY for
distress or PAN for urgency will ensure
priority handling but the aeroplane's
actual fuel state should reflect the
seriousness of the emergency call. A
commander should only make such a call
when he believes the aircraft to be in
danger, not because the fuel state has
fallen below the amount needed to
comply with formula given above.
10. For the future, it is not anticipated that
any special procedure will be introduced
for fuel emergencies but the Authority is
considering ways of providing more
accurate forecasting of delays.
(Authority: Director Air Navigation Services)

[fatbus]

JJ thanks for that, good to have it posted here.

Marooned, very good post as well. I think you will find the Flt Ops (AS) expects you to commit and in doing so will have 20 mins above your cont fuel. 100nm Alt juel works out to be a bit more than 30 mins , this is just food for thought.

[Schnowzer]

And I thought they had just reworded a policy that was already in the book (and rarely used) just to make it more understandable. But that nothing has actually changed.

[Marooned]

Thanks Jetjock for posting the reference.

6. Crews should plan to arrive overhead a
destination aerodrome with, at the very
least, fuel sufficient to:
a) Make an approach to land; and
b) carry out a missed approach; and
c) fly to an alternate aerodrome, carry
out the subsequent approach and
landing; and
d) hold for 30 minutes delay.

Our fuel policy should reflect the above and as it stands in the FOM/OMA has I assume been accepted by the GCAA.

NB: The above states 'at the very least' and our FOM/OMA states the 'minimum' fuel required. If we take 'minimum' then we must understand that we will have to make the decision to commit prior to TOD as you will soon be below final reserve + alt fuel. If you commit or divert you are now intending to land with a minimum of final reserve. If you divert you will have no holding option... you will probably have to complete the 'fuel quantity low' check list or equivalent and ensure that you do not have to G/A (Pan, keep your spacing, land after if needed etc). However, if you commit or divert you will not be alone with other EK aircraft in the same state. Add UAE ATC to the mix and we will have a new fuel policy as quick as you can say TC.

At the end of the day we should take the amount of fuel we are comfortable with not that we are micromanaged to take. This will vary in accordance with experience and conditions on the day. Fuel is on its way up again and with the crisis management the way it is they are looking to cut/slash anything they can. There is a difference however to capping utilities and non payment of bonuses... This is commercial pressure impacting on safety. It will be a false economy.

[411A]

Re-release/re-dispatch has been in use for many years, and requires sufficient fuel for an enroute destination/alternate, with sufficient fuel on board to the continue to destination/approach/divert to alternate/then hold.
This is all nothing new, and I'm surprised that the so-called professionals at EK have never operated accordingly.

In addition, re-release/re-dispatch, if applied properly, absolutely does not require committing to any airfield.

Suggest EK management and pilots have a re-think about all this...as SaudiArabian was able to save huge amounts of fuel using the applicable re-release/re-dispatch procedures...circa 1982.

[ekpilot]

Blame the Pilots again

What might happen is that the fuel planning minimum will go down on the flight plans from what it is now. Because you are a responsible pilot you will "take ownership of this situation" as you've heard it many times in the commanders meeting and add what seem necessary REALISTIC fuel on the day. Then when you land anywhere they will calculate their little statistics and say (actual landing fuel minus new minimum fuel = new value) and then be able to prove that the pilots are carrying too much fuel AGAIN. Then our extraordinary self evaluated good 500 VPs will justify why they are SO required to manage those bad pilots. Then some pilots who will just do what they are told ( YES SIR, NO SIR ), the ones that lick the floors just to go fly the shinny big airplanes will be flying around on fumes thinking " I'm so good". But the most important thing is that the instigators of this new system to plan for less fuel will be able to say " hey i save X amount of virtual money per virtual flight X 100 zigatrillions virtual flights a year = x amount of virtual money. Please pay my actual VP productivity bonus. This rule is used in other airlines as a last resort on certain days to carry out long flights to the limits of the aircraft on that day. Let's see how they apply it here. In my previous airline it was called a re-cleared flight and the company was "taking ownership" of some responsibility by giving us a re-clearance via the dispatch. But we have no dispatch at EK. Why should they become a dispatched airline like all the major airlines they compare themselves with. Why should they "take ownership" of a situation and be responsible for the flight planning when they can just produce the biggest flight planning package in the industry with 227 FCIs, 50 FCN's, 54 weekly updates, 60 FTIs, and just blame the pilots when it goes wrong. Unfortunately the captain of the aircraft is responsible to take the fuel. You just have to learn the fact that you will never be good around here. But you need to be responsible and take the fuel you think you need. The difference between virtuality and reality is that you can't fly an airplane from the office except on Microsoft whatever. You can only think that you can... ( this is funny! i love pprune! )

Keep Discovering

[max AB]

Howdy 411A, been a while.

If you get to your decision point and decide, yes I can make DXB with just alt fuel plus fixed then you continue. The point these guys are making is that no delay at DXB means up to 20 minutes. So as you descend into DXB you start to get vectored all over the place and now you have lost your alternate fuel, ie you commit and say to your self "gee I didn't see that happening" But in fact you accepted it as a strong possibility a couple of hours previously at the decision point.

And I know EK will never be as good as your beloved GF was back in the 80's but they have been using reduced reserve planning from the start, with the 310s/300s to LHR with FRA as the enroute alt and in more recent years with full 330s in winter from MNL. Its just that in those days, no delay meant just that.

[Wiley]

Has anyone posting here actually read the applicable FCI? The very limited flights they're introducing this measure on have a history of zero use of contingency fuel, and the two flights into Dubai are coming in during periods where Dubai is not "Heathrow-on-Sand", (as I admit it is for much of the day).

I've dispatched on re-clearance flight plans in the past and not felt any discomfort using the procedure. It's just one more decision - a no-brainer 'divert?/continue?' one - based upon the fuel on board when you reach the descent point for the enroute alternate.

Apart from that, nothing really changes - if you're put into the hold at your destination, (unlikely, given the stats for the flights EK has nominated for the first trial of the procedure), when (or before, if you need a comfort zone) you reach your min. divert fuel, you divert. I accept you'll have a shorter period in the hold, but that shouldn't make any difference to your comfort level - you just bug out earlier.

If, after assessing the situation, (which I hope to God everyone does prior to every descent!), you consider committing to destination is acceptable, you commit, and if ATC for some reason can't deliver on on their promised EAT, you declare an emergency, (just as you would have done had you been carrying more contingency fuel, if some minutes later) - but with exactly he same amount of fuel remaining.

With Dubai, unlike many other destinations, there's always a cop-out. If they delayed your promised EAT, from BUBIN or DESDI, even after committing to destination, you'd still have sufficient fuel to divert from the hold to one of three, possibly four nearby airfields.

NOTHING changes except that you'll have less time in the hold should holding become necessary - and statistically, for the flights they've nominated, holding has never been an issue.

Sorry gents. On this one, I can't share the outrage.

-----------------------------------------------------

maxAB, saw your post after I posted my message. I agree that the vectoring from the holds into Dubai is ridiculous. But if there's an EK captain out there who doesn't allow for this in calculating his min. diversion fuel and his min. commit fuel, he shouldn't be a captain. The remote holding points should be replaced by close in holds that would allow ATC to to give aircraft a clear, continuous descent without the need for an interminable cross country tour and the far too early extension of flaps (which happens all the time under the current crazy system). This would allow crews to plan with some confidence how much fuel they will burn between the hold and touchdown.

This point has been discussed at length here some years ago. Apparently, the problem is empire protection, in this case, from Abu Dhabi ATC, who refuse to accept that the current system is utterly crazy and costs enormous amounts of wasted fuel and unnecessary diversions.

[Old King Coal]

I'm with Wiley & 411A

We had the same "20 minutes = no delay" from the UK CAA for many years (so no guessing whom the GCAA copied it from, eh?!)

Nb. Company Minimum Reserve (CMR) = Diversion Fuel + Final Reserve (30’ holding at 1500 ft overhead your alternate).

It’s the CMR figure which you put into the FMC’s / PERF INIT page / RESERVE field ... indeed sensible pilots (imho) will add a few hundred kilograms to this to ensure an early ‘heads-up’ that you’re getting close to CMR and need to make a decision about staying or diverting (‘coz it’s a bit late when you get to CMR to then start making your mind up as to what to do... as you’ll see in a minute).

Now imagine that you’re approaching DXB (or some such multi-runway’ed airport) and are told that you can expect to hold for 24 minutes (= 6x around the hold). It’s evident that the reason for the delay is traffic flow, the airport is fully serviceable and that it has several runways available. There are a couple of scenarios to consider:

1. If you look at the FMC and it predicts that you’ve got enough fuel in the tanks to hold for 28 minutes before you reach CMR – there’s therefore no problem, so carry on holding. Uhm, but what if you get to the point where you’ve been around the hold 6x, you’ve reached CMR fuel, the FMC is bleating “Insufficient fuel” and ATC say that you need to go around 2 more times.... are you really going to divert?
   
2. Now imagine that you’ve been given a 24 minute delay and you’re FMC says that you only have enough fuel to hold for 18 minutes before you reach your CMR... would you divert then?

Imho, so long as you are reasonably assured of landing at your destination (e.g. the weather’s not a factor, there are multiple runways, either at the destination airport or very close by) then it is perfectly reasonable to ‘commit’ to your destination and to use your Diversion Fuel to do so.

Of course some will say “But what if the aircraft in front of you has a problem and blocks the runway to which you’re approaching to land”... A) multiple runways are available and / or close by (Ras Al Khaimah,Sharjah, etc)... and besides, who’s to say that the same couldn’t occur to the runway you’re diverting to and / or what assurances do you have that there are no delays at your diversion airport (in which instance you’ll probably arrive at you alternate with even less fuel than if you’d stayed in the hold and landed at your destination, right)?!

Needless to say, there comes a point when you have to make a decision to either stay or divert.

If you’ve elected to stay in the hold, go below CMR, but then decide to divert,... given that the diversion fuel is a fixed figure, the fuel that you’ve used to hold below the CMR would be the fuel available for the ‘Final Reserve’ and, therein, you will necessarily be landing with less than Final Reserve – so you must then declare a "Mayday".... accordingly it might have been better to stay where you were, i.e. in the hold, committing to and landing at your original destination rather than to have diverted.

The need for Diversion Fuel + Final Reserve is a ‘planning’ requirement, it does not dictate what you must do with it once airborne.

All imho.


The following (hence the edit) is cut / pasted from,

CAR / Part 4 / OPS 1 / Subpart D:

1-D-23 01 January 2008 / Appendix 1 to CAR–OPS 1.375 / In-flight fuel management:

(b) In-flight fuel management.

(1) If, as a result of an in-flight fuel check, the expected fuel remaining on arrival at the destination is less than the required alternate fuel plus final reserve fuel, the commander must take into account the traffic and the operational conditions prevailing at the destination aerodrome, along the diversion route to an alternate aerodrome and at the destination alternate aerodrome, when deciding whether to proceed to the destination aerodrome or to divert, so as to land with not less than final reserve fuel.

[NO LAND 3]

I agree with Wiley and Old King Coal.
Unusual to see factual, well reasoned and unemotional posts here...
Outrage for its own sake just makes the job harder for everyone and perpetrates urban myths.

[sexdriven]

Many airlines have redispath fuel planning procedures in place as a contingency. But remember that the intent of this procedure is to allow for dispatch when payload or range restricted and not for fuel saving.

[NO LAND 3]

This focus lately on Contingency fuel seems to heading in one certain direction.

Its not the Contigency Fuel I'm worried about...

[Old King Coal]

sexdriven - For long-range flights, it does not make good sense to have a Contingency Fuel policy which is based solely upon some % figure of the total 'Trip Fuel' and therein it's maddness (though I'll admit that it's a nice feeling, from a piloting pespective) to regularly arrive at ones destination with all, or most, of ones contingency fuel still in the tanks; So there's a re-clearance procedure, designed to reduce the Trip Fuel (and, as it's a % function of the Trip Fuel, to also reduce the Contingency Fuel).

That said, occasionally it might not work out, e.g. in-flight you find you need more (contingency) fuel than has been allowed for, e.g aircraft is heavier than the load sheet suggests, you were stuck at a non-optimum level for a long time, the head / tail winds are not as forecast, etc.
In that instance the rules are quite specific, you either have enough fuel to do the re-clearance or you don't... and in the latter case you're going to have to come up with a 'Plan B' (e.g. do a 'splash & dash' somewhere, assuming you're in hours to do it, etc).

In any event, when you're unable to do a re-clearance 'coz the fuel it's suggested you should have onboard simply isn't there, you're howgozit (PLOG) will have a nice audit trail of what occurred and any fuel shortfall will be readily explained (to management) when - sitting at some intermediate airport - you're asked "So what happened?".... you'll be able to sit there, all sanctimonious, and say "We'll I took what you told me to and it wasn't enough, for these reasons - refer to PLOG - so might I suggest you go speak to Ops / NCC / Dispatch?!"

As a CYA, might I therein suggest that you keep copious notes wrt fuel remaining / flight levels / head-tail winds on your PLOG.

Saving fuel, be that for range / payload purposes, or simply to save money is sensible (it's a commercial operation after all and is all part and parcel of what pays our wages) but fuel planning is NOT an exact science and I'm all for taking plenty of motion-lotion when the needs dictate and therein I will happily argue the case as to why I did so, when required.

[Wiley]

Old King Coal, I'm afraid I'm not a great fan of the FMC when going in to Dubai, for the same reason that some of the naysayers here are complaining about the new procedures – for thanks to the crazy, unpredictable vectoring we get at Dubai (see above), the figure the FMC will calculate from exiting the hold to touchdown is totally unrealistic.

I could probably write my real name to this, as quite a few of my ex-FOs will recognise the rant to follow, so from here on, I’ll consider ‘Wiley’s’ cover as totally blown.

The FMC will tell you it’ll cost you 600-700kgs to touchdown. On the 773, at Dubai, you’ll need 2 tonnes – considerably more than at EVERY other EK destination. (I’ve burnt more – 2.3 tonnes – on one occasion when the vectoring was particularly long because of Cat II conditions, but that was a ‘one off’. However, I could see quite early in the piece, (when asked to reduce to 180 knots – i.e., requiring 15 flap extension - at about 8,000’), that I wasn’t going to make it touchdown with min. divert fuel, so had to make the decision then and there to commit and continue the approach or divert to AEN at that point, with still about 400kgs more in the tanks than the min. divert fuel. After getting my FO’s agreement, I elected to continue the approach. We landed – as expected - 200kgs under the min divert fuel.)

So if committing isn’t an option and the min divert to AUH is (say) 6.2 tonnes, you simply MUST leave the hold with 8.2 tonnes to still have the minimum required 6.2 tonnes at the MAP.

The ‘up’ side to this is that if you reach that figure and ATC hasn’t cleared you out of the hold, you bug out straight to your alternate – having stayed right up to the last minute you possibly can (keeping both the commercial and flight ops departments happy) – but because you won’t then burn the 2 tonnes it would have taken to get from the hold to the MAP and you haven’t had to do a high power and ‘dirty’ missed approach, you’ll get to your alternate quite probably with 2 to 3 tonnes (or even) more fuel than the CMR, giving you lots of ‘fat’ should there be a delay or another missed approach at your alternate.

The only time you’ll find yourself arriving at the alternate with minimum fuel is if everything goes wrong – you’re not released from the hold until you’re right on min fuel, you burn every bit of that 2 tonnes you allowed for the approach and then you get to the minima and miss out.

If that was to happen, you still have enough fuel to reach your alternate, but depending upon why you were forced to go around, you might want to seriously consider declaring an emergency, requesting an immediate turn onto downwind and a 1500’ missed approach altitude, then vectors for a five mile final - and plugging in the autoland system and putting the machine down whatever the weather conditions. But to get into that situation, quite a few things will have had to wrong and maybe you shouldn’t have got up that morning.

Committing to destination involves exactly the same calculations. If the final reserve is 3.1 tonnes, you simply MUST depart the hold upon reaching 5.1 tonnes – and if ATC delay you beyond that point, it’s time – then and there - to declare an emergency, as you will be landing below your final reserve fuel. The only other thing to consider in this case is that you’re going to get a LOW FUEL warning, so do you pre-empt the EICAS and prepare – and brief - for a Flap 20 landing and complete the checklist in the relatively unstressed environment of the holding pattern, or wait for the EICAS message and deal with the checklist, possibly while on final approach? I know what the book says about pre-empting EICAS messages and checklists, but I also know what I would do.

I find that writing these figures down on my flight plan – for all the available alternates, giving me easily seen multiple options that (importantly) I’ve briefed for before top of descent – takes an enormous amount of pressure off the whole exercise. At any time, you know what options are still available and which ones are not – and most important of all, when you get to the ‘trigger’ figure for whatever option you’ve decided upon way back in the cruise, you divert.

[Old King Coal]

Wiley... wise words indeed!!!

.... and fwiw I totally agree about having a trigger and I too am no great fan of the FMC's version of events... which is why I always increase its RESERVE figure to something much more sensible (somewhat as you've suggest) to ensure that my ah doesn't start going sixpence & half'a'crown when in the hold and the FMC says 'Insufficient Fuel'.